【Reading】すもじ/おすもじ

【English Name】Suomoji / Osumoji

Sumoji is a nyobo-kotoba (court-lady language) genteel rephrasing of sushi, and osumoji, with o added at the head, is its polite expression.

Nyobo-kotoba is a vocabulary system cultivated by the court ladies who served the inner palace from the early Muromachi period, characterized by an indirect and refined manner of speaking. Its representative coinage technique is what is called moji-kotoba (the moji form), a mechanism in which a new word is created by adding moji to the initial sound of the original word. Sumoji is formed by adding moji to su, the opening sound of sushi.

Words born from the same method include shamoji (rephrasing of the rice scoop, shakushi), yumoji (referring to the yukata robe), and himojii (meaning hunger). Shamoji and himojii have been inherited into modern Japanese and continue to be widely used.

Nyobo-kotoba originally developed as a means of elegantly expressing things related to clothing, food, and shelter. In time it spread from the women serving at the imperial court to the inner quarters of warrior households, and then to the common women's class, and over the ages it came to be incorporated into men's speech as well. Court-lady language examples are also recorded in works such as the yusoku-kojitsu (court-practice) text Ama no Mokuzu, and the Japanese-language reference works compiled by Christian missionaries, the Nippo Jisho (Japanese-Portuguese dictionary) and the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam (Grammar of the Japanese Language).

Hearing the rephrasing osumoji at a modern sushi restaurant is almost unheard of, but it remains a graceful expression that quietly conveys the history in which court vocabulary and Japan's food culture intersected.